Dropzone: a case study of power creep. What went wrong after 1.1?

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I’m a late convert to Dropzone Commander. I bought the 1.1. game in 2017 and expansions for a bargain price, inspired by 2014-2015 reviews that praised the game and the fantastic models. I recently studied the newer 2.1.1 rules and started to compare the different earlier editions. I think I will remain an OldZoner. The game has slowly developed in a wrong direction and the post-Hawk-Wargames corrections haven’t corrected the errors. Here’s my analysis. Dropzone: a case study of power creep.

More in my blog:
http://amsterdamwar.game.blog/2021/03/19/dropzone-2-1-1-im-an-oldzoner-forever/

[Daeothar]

Thanks; that was a good read.

I've been a DZ player and fan of the universe for quite some time now, having started with the original Hawk starter box, splitting two boxes with a mate (he got UCM, I got Scourge).

We played it quite a while, and it was pretty cool. I feel we never got the most out of the game though, as more shiny things came along, but in essence, we remained with the old forces, only adding a few drops (heh) here and there.

I even got me the beginnings of a Resistance force too, but pretty soon after, we stopped playing it, in favour of other games.

We did pick up Dropfleet Commander a few years later, and this too, has seen regular play, but again; we never fully explored all aspects of the game.

Then the take-over by TTC happened, and we are yet to play another game of DZC, so I can't comment on how it plays these days, but your aguments appear to be valid.

In fact scale/speed/power creep has been a pet peeve of mine for years, with many other systems as well, so thanks for the heads-up.

[Grumpy Gnome]

An interesting post.

Whilst we have not played Dropzone, we looked into it when we got into Dropfleet. The powercreep you talk about and the evolution of game mechanics is really fascinating. Part of me is disappointed to see the game evolve like that but part of me can not resist repeating to myself over and over again, “Wow! The Scourge Behemoth is cool looking!”

[palaeomerus]

I'm embarrassed to say that I bought a bunch of Dropzone stuff back when it first appeared in stores (Back when Spartan still had their all resin fantasy navy game out) and I bought a bunch of Scourge and Shaltiri kits and ripped them apart to make new alien ships for Mongoose's A Call To Battle: Starfleet game and of course I was buying those big boxes of pewter Klingon and Federation ships too. I postulated that the Shaltiri-part ships were for another offshoot of the Vulcans who were obsessed with worlds being governed at the local level and went around causing trouble for would be star empires by arming and acting as military advisors for any world that asked for help. They were sort of Anti-Romulans with a quasi-minarchist bent who hated big centralized governments and carried sabers or broadswords around with them. So they were violent but not domineering or psychopaths. And their good intentions and interventions made everyone hate them because they were trying to foster independent worlds and unmake star empires.

Anway take the Warspear fighter, make it fly backwards so the saucer is a primary hull, and paint it dull steel color and the solar panel bit a metallic dark green and put some dark matte muddy purple strips here and there in the "race car" sense and that was my light cruiser for my Vulcan offshoot. Pulling parts off and making a thing fly backwards was a common thing with the VOs. And the Scourge whether it was a tank or whatever I pulled them apart to make lots of little and big ships in weird shapes and considered them the fungi from Yuggoth's space fleet doing monstrous unknowable things in the black silence of the void n' stuff.

Of course now, Dropzone, Spartan Games and the Mongoose ACAB:SF are all goners at least as far as FLGS goes. But it was fun back then.

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Tnx all for replying. I think about downgrading the shiny newer units to 1.1  basic game stats, to rebalance. I also found a Future War Commander conversion (Blitzkrieg Commander SF edition)

[Daeothar]

...I think about downgrading the shiny newer units to 1.1  basic game stats, to rebalance...

That would certainly be interesting.

If you ever get this in working order, I'd love to take a gander...

[Skipper]

Outstanding analysis.

My local group bought into the original game fairly heavily,  but the power creep soon made it unplayable.

Power creep was not the main issue, but definitely made an impact.  Out issue came down to who could afford to upgrade to new units vs who could not.  The single player with more expendable income was able to purchase the newer units faster than the rest and without having the proper counters (newer units)   This resulted in a local meta imbalance.  It also resulted in the "buy in" for new players was too steep so the player base became stagnet.  Ultimately it just fell off our radar even before the end of Hawk wargames.

If the core units had remained viable,  we might still be playing the game as we all really liked it. 

Edit:  I forgot to add that your analysis was very good and spot on.